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Screwed by the Lawyers
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Copyright and Trademark law have gotten in the way of or forced cancellation for many works. No matter how promising, popular or profitable a show is, it's still apt to get canceled if it would be illegal to keep broadcasting. Fans may have to Keep Circulating the Tapes if legal troubles also forbid a home release, or force the official release of an altered version. A Real Song Theme Tune might be replaced with a generic theme due to the need for both the rights to the actual song and the rights for the recording itself. TV stations have blanket licenses, but these rights have to be cleared for release on home media. Songwriters and performers might want more money, and the studio might not be willing to pay for it. Scenes might be edited out after legal objections for various reasons. When it comes to mainstream media, this situation tends to feel more myopic on the part of the owner of the intellectual property in question, as it would make more sense to license a popular and profitable work rather than shut it down (unless they're Doing It for the Art, of course). On the other hand, New Media tends to get hit by this more often due to the universal presence of Fan Works online and their tendency to be helmed by independent creators who really can't afford any licensing deals; though even then it can feel pointless given the sheer ubiquity—what made that particular work a big enough deal to be worth suing? Sometimes, the reason why a trademark is so zealously protected is because the holder wants to prevent it from entering common use as a generic term, which would cause them to lose it. This has happened with Aspirin (once a Bayer trademark, they lost it in many countries after World War I), Cellophane, and other "genericized" trademarks. It's also why most productions bend over backwards to make sure that Real Life product names are not mentioned at all (unless as Product Placement), and certainly never as generics. But note that this only applies to trademarks, not to copyrights. Additionally, note that (contrary to the common misunderstanding of this law) a company is never legally required to protect a trademark in order to keep it—they don't lose it simply for failing to protect it; they only lose it if it enters common use as a generic term to the point where it is no longer trademarkable. It can, however, weaken future court arguments if the defendant is able to say "Well they didn't intervene with Case X, so why are they suing me?" The Other Wiki refers to this as the tragedy of the anticommons, where the existence of competing rights holders—not just in copyright, but also in patent law,note Where it's a very serious problem, since technology is iterative. Many companies are highly annoyed by the "patent thicket" keeping them from developing new software and hardware, since so much is patented and they can't build on current without stepping on a patent or two or two hundred. However, no company has an incentive to end the thicket, since they regard their patents as leverage against others. Making matters worse, there are also "patent trolls" who exploit the patents they hold in order to start lawsuits, even though they don't actually make anything themselves and, in many cases, didn't even invent the things they hold the patents to, instead simply buying the rights from the real inventors. land ownership,note Most often when someone has a big project and needs to buy up a bunch of lots, giving landowners an incentive to hold out for a higher payday. leasing rights, and other areas—frustrates achieving a socially desirable outcome. To further complicate matters, organizations of all kinds try as hard as possible to blur the lines between copyrights, patents, and trademarks in their favor. Related to Screwed by the Network. May be why No Origin Stories Allowed happens. |
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When "Strong Bad Sings" was released to DVD, the song The Cheat played for Strong Mad had to be changed to "Hot Cross Buns". At the time of its release, the lyrics to the original song, "Happy Birthday to You!", were considered copyrighted. The cartoon was also re-edited in 2004 to change the phone number at the end after a limousine company in New York complained to the Brothers Chaps that they were receiving calls from people wanting to order the album. | |
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The Trainsformers shorts, which were a blend of Thomas & Friends and The Transformers, gleefully poked fun at being unauthorized use of copyrighted material and a violation of it. It shouldn't be a surprise that a copyright protest brought down the four videos made. However, the creator lampshaded this in two non-copyright-infringing follow-up videos, and other YouTube users re-posted the videos, anyway. | |
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After 2006, Bill & Ted's Excellent Halloween Adventure at Halloween Horror Nights became much more limited in what it can do with its parodies than in the past. For a long time, the show had absolute freedom in what it would lampoon, as the general assumption is that it falls under the "Parody" clause of Fair Use. Things changed in 2006, when Disney seemed to disagree and threatened to sue Universal over how the show that year utilized Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann. The controversy only worsened when on that same year DC Comics came down on Universal for its usage of Lex Luthor as the main villain of the show, and ultimately filed a cease-and-desist letter against them, which resulted in Lex Luthor being replaced by Dr. Evil on the final night of the show. After that, the show avoided putting certain copyrighted characters in the spotlight for too long, instead doing things like using a celebrity as the show's main villain rather than a movie villain. This also led to them completely banning videotaping and photography of the show, so as to prevent it from getting onto the internet and attracting unwanted attention. It is believed that the rising worries concerning the potential of legal backlash over the show's content was one of the many reasons why the show was brought to an end after 2017. | |
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The Bratz doll line was stopped in its tracks by a 2005 court case that found that the concept was created while its creator was still at Mattel, before making a comeback in 2010, although by that time, their popularity had waned (plus, the new dolls are a bit more conservative). This also had a more permanent knock-on effect for the Animated Shows. | |
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One of the things that keeps well off independent circuit wrestlers like La Parka from joining promotions like WWE and AAA for potentially higher pay checks is freedom to work where and how they want. Start taking that away, as TNA found out when they tried to control Matt Hardy, and several independent feds end up losing a hot draw to WWE and resent your company rather than WWE for it. AAA affiliated Lucha Underground should have known better, but ended up with Ricochet abandoning them for WWE after their seven month season delay forced him to miss a New Japan Pro-Wrestling tour. Eventually King Cuerno decided to solve the problem concerning Lucha Underground for good, drawing in Ivelisse Vélez, Joey Ryan and Kobra Moon as he went about it. Together they successfully got Lucha Underground to switch to the CMLL model of "Do what you want as long as you make your scheduled dates". | |
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SMG4: The Lawsuit Arc is basically an In-Universe example of this trope, which also a serves as Defied Trope in Real Life, where Nintendo, spearheaded by Lawyer Kong, is out to remove all non-Nintendo characters from the Mushroom Kingdom and revert it to back its pre-SMG4 state, eventually leading to a firewall being erected that keeps all Original Characters out and a DMCA being signed that (temporarily) kills off such characters. Ultimately, Shigeru Miyamoto decides to let SMG4's channel remain the way it is, but SMG4, SMG3, Fishy Boopkins, and Bob are all redesigned to look less like Nintendo characters. | |
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The Occupation Saga: Amazon requires exclusivity as a contractual condition of participation in Kindle Unlimited, so author J.L. Williams has to delete the original Web Serial Novels from r/HFY before publication of the finished book. This actually got their Reddit account suspended at one point for deleting two dozen posts in quick succession. | |
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Garfield had a short run of Believe it, or don't gags until PAWS Inc. got a cease-and-desist letter from the Robert Ripley estate. | |
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WWE Network was forced to pull all Stampede Wrestling footage from the service after only a few days when Bret Hart claimed he had the rights to all Stampede footage featuring him, though they are free to continue circulating footage of him from the other promotions he has signed with, WWE included. | |
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The regular game on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue called "Pick-up Song" - where a song is played in live, a panelist starts singing along to it whilst the music is faded down, and the panelist continues singing a cappella with the aim being to be as close as possible to the original song when the sound comes back on - is the main reason why the show will never be released in full, and the game was omitted from the compilation releases until recently. (During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the show switched to using virtual audiences, this trope also resulted in said game being rested, since it would involve playing the songs on a live-streamed event.) | |
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The Order of the Stick: Parodied with an In-Universe lawyer duo: One fight gets cut short because it involves a Dungeons & Dragons monster that Wizards of the Coast didn't include in its Open Game License. The lawyers haul away the offending creature. Invoked by Vaarsuvius, who cuts a Wizard Duel short by exposing their enemy as an Overused Copycat Character. |
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ECW used popular rock, metal, punk, and hip-hop tracks for everything, from wrestler themes to show themes to video packages, to further their image as a hip, rebellious, underground promotion. Unfortunately, it was also a very cash-strapped promotion, which meant that said music had to be edited out of home video releases to avoid legal entanglements. Part of the reason the promotion commissioned and published the ECW Extreme Music and ECW Anarchy Rocks CDs was so that they could have less expensive cover versions by less well-known bands at their disposal instead. | |
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When the Hardy Boyz returned to the WWE, fans were excited to finally see "Broken" Matt Hardy in his home company. While Matt kept some of the mannerisms (such as the "DELETE!" taunt), he was more like his original character. The problem was rights issues, with TNA claiming ownership of the character, even though Hardy had created it himself. Eventually, we got a similar gimmick with "Woken" Matt Hardy, but it wasn't quite the same (though that could be the WWE's influence as much as anything). It seems Hardy is able to be full-blown "Broken" in AEW, though. | |
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In Schlock Mercenary, the "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates" had to be changed (even in past strips) to the "The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" after receiving "the world's politest Cease and Desist letter" from FranklinCovey, the owners of the "Seven Habits..." trademark eight years after the fact. However, Howard Tayler claims he didn't mind seeing as he was looking for an excuse to change the name anyway so he could use the Maxims in The Merch. | |
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The Boxcar Children: Not only did original author Gertrude Chandler Warner never marry or have children, but by the time of her 1979 death she had outlived not only her parents but also both of her siblings and even those siblings' spouses.note 1971, 1975 and 1978 respectively for Frances, John and Marion/Mayo. As the sole child (living or otherwise) among all three siblings, Gertrude's entire estate — including the Boxcar Children IP — was left to nephew David Brett Warner (John's son). Naturally, publisher Albert Whitman wasted no time buying out the series for an unknown sum — and then sat on the franchise for over a decade before relaunching it as basically a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys clone for younger readers. To add insult to injury, Gertrude Chandler Warner is still the sole name listed on the covers despite the Warner family having completely died off and thus having zero creative input whatsoever.note David Brett died in 1999 at 72, himself unmarried with no children. | |
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The wrestling vampire Gangrel was used much less in WWE after White Wolf threatened to sue for infringement, as Gangrel was the name of one of the vampire clans in its Vampire: The Masquerade RPGnote The writers were given RPG books as reference material, not realizing that "Gangrel" was not a public domain name like "Nosferatu". They settled for a 5-year agreement which White Wolf would be credited in any material in which Gangrel was used. White Wolf would eventually sue the WWE in 2008 after they used Gangrel in the Raw 15 Year Anniversary Battle Royal without credit. It would turn out that White Wolf failed to protect the trademark,note Having failed to publish any new material with the name "Gangrel" in it for a number of years giving the wrestler the full rights to the name. | |
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Homestar Runner: The site had a game based on the See 'n Say toy where a main character would speak if the pointer landed on the corresponding picture. The game was revamped in 2007 to a generic toy with buttons making the characters say the same lines. According to some sources, Mattel sent the Brothers Chaps a cease-and-desist order over the game, resulting in the change. Even the Homestar Runner Wiki was requested to scrub all references to the original version. Prior to Adobe ending support for Flash, the original See 'n Say game could be accessed as a secret page. Playthroughs have since been uploaded to YouTube. When "Strong Bad Sings" was released to DVD, the song The Cheat played for Strong Mad had to be changed to "Hot Cross Buns". At the time of its release, the lyrics to the original song, "Happy Birthday to You!", were considered copyrighted. The cartoon was also re-edited in 2004 to change the phone number at the end after a limousine company in New York complained to the Brothers Chaps that they were receiving calls from people wanting to order the album. The Strong Bad Email "duck pond" had two versions of a duck pond simulator. After completing the one on Strong Bad's Tandy 400, a version based on the Atari 2600 can be accessed. Likely as a result of Atari threatening legal action, the latter version was scrubbed in 2005. |
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The Strong Bad Email "duck pond" had two versions of a duck pond simulator. After completing the one on Strong Bad's Tandy 400, a version based on the Atari 2600 can be accessed. Likely as a result of Atari threatening legal action, the latter version was scrubbed in 2005. | |
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It's largely thought that Epoch renamed the Sylvanian Families into Calico Critters when selling the toys in the US due to a lawsuit brought on by electronics company Sylvania (or to keep from being confused as being related to them). Wikipedia says the reason for the name change was because Tomy lost the right to sell them under that name in '93, while the website doesn't acknowledge either. However, the animated series was allowed to be released on DVD under the original title. | |
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